Earlier this week, Arthur W. Page Society members attended the Page Society’s West Coast Social Media Summit, hosted and sponsored by eBay Inc., at our company’s headquarters in San Jose, CA. The full-day program focused on emerging trends and the dynamics of an authentic social enterprise, featuring leading experts, innovators and practitioners who are helping to invent and shape new social media engagement models and platforms that are transforming engagement and communications throughout society and business.

“You wouldn’t get on a plane being flown by an unlicensed pilot; why hand over social tools to untrained employees?” @jowyang #AWPSocial

— Richard Brewer-Hay (@ebayinkblog) January 31, 2012

Altimeter Group‘s Jeremiah Owyang kicked off the day presenting highlights from his research, “Social Business Readiness: How advanced companies prepare internally.”

“Companies now average an overwhelming number of corporate-owned social media accounts – current average is 178″ @jowyang #AWPSocial

— Richard Brewer-Hay (@ebayinkblog) January 31, 2012

Jeremiah emphasized that companies must ascend a social business hierarchy of needs in order to achieve true success:
1) Foundation: First, develop a business plan and put governance in place.
2) Safety: Then, get organized by anointing a team and process to deal with crises.
3) Formation: Next, connect business units to increase coordination and reduce duplication.
4) Enablement: Grow by letting them prosper – give business units the support and flexibility to reach goals
5) Enlightenment: Finally, weave real-time market response into business processes and planning.

Look for future installments of the Arthur W. Page Social Media Day recap here on eBay Ink over the coming days.

Cheers,
RBH